SEO Question; duplicate title tags

[pdunton]

I am getting repeated "Duplicate Title Tags" errors from Google since the 3.4 upgrade (I think).
The cause is the addition of ?patc=1 to the URLS.
As in:
store.php/products/amethyst-ring-40011
store.php/products/amethyst-ring-40011?patc=1

I have excluded these "patc's" from my Google sitemap but Google still finds the urls and complains.
Worried about getting penalized for too many duplicate title tags.

Does anyone with SEO expertise have any insight?

[Jamie]

This is a bit complicated. In version 3.4.0, we added a new option to display products as "thumbnails, with add to cart". If you choose this option, an add to cart button appears below the thumbnails.

Now, it is not always possible to add an item to the cart from a thumbnail view as that view by default does not display product options. If you have product options assigned to a product and you are using this view, we still show the "add to cart" button.

For products that do not have options, clicking the button will submit the form and add the item to the cart. For products that DO have options, because adding to the cart would result in an ugly error like "option XYZ is required", we need to tell Squirrelcart that the product page is being requested for the purpose of displaying options for an add to cart request. The "patc=1" is telling Squirrelcart to do that.

We use that parameter to trigger a more user friendly info message that makes sense, like:
example.png

Google should not be seeing that URL. We remove the ?patc=1 part from the URL for bots, via this code in sc_product():

    // this sets a URL linking to the product, with a parameter at the end to trigger a message telling them to fill out the options
    if ($Show_Add_to_Cart) {
        if (sc_is_bot()) {
            $Pre_Add_to_Cart_URL = $URL; // don't want to hurt ranking with extra crap in URL for a search bot that doesn't need it
        } else {
            $Pre_Add_to_Cart_URL = strstr($URL,'?') ? $URL.'&patc=1' : $URL.'?patc=1';
        }
    } 

I just tested this on your site. I visited normally, and the add to cart button URL had ?patc=1. I then changed my user agent via a Firefox add-on to match Google's bots, and the URL changed back to the standard product URL.

I did a search in Google for pages on your site with ?patc=1 in the URL, and they are in their index. Not sure why. If you had them in your sitemap file, that would explain it.

You can add rel="nofollow" to the <a /> tag for the add to cart button in the product_thumbnail.tpl.php template file, which may keep Google from following it:
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=96569

I've added that for the next version (may not be added until 3.5.0).

In the event that a bot does see the URL and follows it, it would make sense to have a unique page title. I've updated the next release to add that. You can add a hack for yours by adding this to the pre_theme.php file in your custom theme folder:

if (!empty($_GET['patc'])) $Title .= ' - Choose Options'; 

That will change the title on those pages to:

Product Name - Choose Options

[pdunton]

OK, Thank you Jamie.
I get that for the most part.

There are no options on any Products at candleberryway.com,
should there still be patc's appended?

My sitemap generator DID include the "Patc" initially.
Goggle may still have those in the index of the site.
In which case they should gradually fade away if I don't put more in the index.

[Jamie]

You're welcome. The ?patc=1 part should be there regardless of whether options are present or not.

[pdunton]

Checked Google Sitemaps this morning and the "?patc=1" duplicated entries are gone.
So, Jamie it works as you expected.
Note to those using XML sitemaps, be sure to exclude the above URL from your generated sitemaps.

[Jamie]

That's great! Glad to hear it.

[pdunton]

Jamie: A brief extract from today's candleberryway.com access log:

/store.php/products/afghan-aquamarine-60012?patc=1
Http Code: 200 Date: Nov 28 11:15:37 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 4139
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

/store.php/products/uruguayan-citrine-60013?patc=1
Http Code: 200 Date: Nov 28 11:19:48 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 3747
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

[Jamie]

There is no referer on those entries. It looks like Google directly visited those URLs based on entries already in its index, from when you had them in the sitemap file. Because nothing else links there, I would imagine that they would drop these at some point.

[pdunton]

I see the lack of referrers. Didn't tumble to the meaning of that.
Thanks Jamie.
I am also seeing some longer than expected retention of other pages by Google.
As in "the item was sold two months ago, taken off-line in the cart then, and still shows up in Google when I check diagnostics."

Phil
Tucson

[Jamie]

I believe in newer versions if the product no longer exists, when Google visits the URL it should result in a 404. I'd try those URLs in question and see if you do get a 404. If so, Google should get a 404 the next time it tries crawling them and should remove them from it's index.

[pdunton]

Many Products which were sold and therefore not displayed are in Google's diagnostics as "404 not found errors." All my Products are single items and I tend to delete Products as they are sold. (Unless I forget!)
This goes for Products sold at least as far back as Oct. 18 as that is where the Google log starts.
Don't think that is too important but will want to learn more.